The Petition to the House of Lords against the Massachusetts Government and Administration of Justice Bills
Summary of DS: House of Lords Library
[Before May 11, 1774]
<The petitioners, native Americans, complain of two bills which, if enacted, will be fatal to the rights, liberties, and peace of all America. Legislation has already been passed that violates the law and the first principles of justice. Now a bill is brought in, ostensibly for regulating the government of Massachusetts, that will deprive the province of rights guaranteed it by its charter, which was a compact between crown and people; no charter has hitherto been altered without a full and fair hearing, and this unconstitutional bill threatens every such compact in Britain and the colonies. The governor’s control of judges, furthermore, gives him power over the property, liberty, and life of the subject, and establishes a judicial tyranny of which Britain had rid itself. The bill that purports to secure a more impartial administration of justice empowers the governor to exempt soldiers from prosecution within the colony for murder, and therefore from control by the civil power, at a time when the troops have been taught that the populace deserves insult and abuse, which no free people can long endure. The result will be outrages and civil commotion. The charge that Americans are disaffected and rebellious is wholly undeserved. For a century they have shared the glory and prosperity of England and the expense of every war, and have stretched themselves to the limit to provide support. Recent disturbances, in a people hitherto so loyal, have demonstrated a general sense of oppression. Although the mother country restrains trade and manufacture, property acquired under those restraints has hitherto been secure; now it is at the disposal of a legislature in which the colonists have no voice or influence or champion, and for them this is slavery. Their right of consent in parting with their property is the last bulwark of liberty, and for support of their position they appeal to British statutes, to all authorities on the constitution, and to long practice in Ireland and America. These bills reduce Americans to the alternatives of being totally enslaved, or contesting with a parent state that they have loved and venerated. The petitioners conjure the House not to pass legislation that will inflame the colonists’ passions, flout the principles of liberty that they have inherited from England, and “drive them to the last Resources of Despair.”>
Stepn Sayre John F: Grimké Edm: Jenings
William Lee Jacob Read Edwd. Bancroft
Arthur Lee Thos Ruston John Alleyne
B Franklin Phi: Neyle Thos Bromfield
Ralph Izard Ed: Fenwick Sr. John Boylston
William Hasell Gibbes Edw: Fenwick Junr. J: Williams
William Blake John Perroneaux John Ellis
Isaac Motte Wm. Middleton Jos Johnson
Henry Laurens William Middleton D. Bowly
Thomas Pinckney   Junr Willm: Heyward
Ra. Izard Junr.
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